Politics

[mikey]

well if i recall correctly, the reason trump won was because of the electoral college, not the actual popular vote
There were more individual votes for Clillary, but because of a stupid voting system, Trump won.

this isn't the case

[Dude]

Can't you at least give him a year or 2 before you jump straight to impeachment talk? Oh, and even if he dies, you're left with Mike Pence. It's downright morbid that you would pray for somebody to die, and you don't have any grounds for impeachment right now. The country voiced what it wanted. It's how democracy works.

$10 says you'd be saying what I said if Hillary won.

[mikey]

$10 says you'd be saying what I said if Hillary won.

maybe not the dying part, but he'd definitely be calling impeachment

[Bloop]

Well, that is true. But, if he has to play the broken system, so be it. I agree that the system is a bad one, but regardless he won fairly according to it.

It still means you can't really conclude it's "what the people wants". Same goes if Clinton won, though; you're still dealing with almost half of American citizens who don't like their outcome.

this isn't the case

It isn't?

[mikey]

It still means you can't really conclude it's "what the people wants". Same goes if Clinton won, though; you're still dealing with almost half of American citizens who don't like their outcome.
It isn't?

trump was ahead in the popular vote the whole time, I think the extra votes came from minnesota or something.  Michigan and New Hampshire weren't counted either, I think.
The electoral college system isn't broken, it's the side effect of having 50 mini-states within a big state.  For example, it was obvious Clinton would win NY and CA by a wide margin because they're just so left that they'll always vote blue, they don't care.  What happens is that this margin is wide enough that the value of your vote decreases as long as you're surrounded by people who vote the same way as you.
It's better when each state has their votes counted as a whole because each state is their own government, having all the people vote individually is negative because it could influence the outcomes of other states in a way that state wouldn't want to.

[Maelstrom]

Maybe, but having all the votes go to one person simply because they got 1% more of the vote is stupid.
There's no way around that.

[mikey]

trump won because enough people hated clinton, not much you can do about it

[Bloop]

But we're talking about the president of the whole country, and not each individual state, right? I think it'd be much more sensible if the people were able to vote for the president directly, without going through a state-medium.

[FireArrow]

Electoral colleges served a purpose when we didn't have the technology to count individual votes across the nation. Its probably outdated but trump still won fairly.

I'm just really disapointed that people decided Trump was a good way to be anti-establishment. Thats like having Justin Bieber perform your appendectomy because you think surgeons are corrupt.

[WaluigiTime64]

But we're talking about the president of the whole country, and not each individual state, right? I think it'd be much more sensible if the people were able to vote for the president directly, without going through a state-medium.

^ This makes a lot of sense. I mean, Australia has a similar system, except there are only 7 states, not 50-whatever it was.

Praise my knowledge of America

[Dudeman]

...um, 50.

[WaluigiTime64]

Yeah, I've never cared about American geography.

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

this isn't the case

You are aware that Clinton won the popular vote, right?

It's not that enough people hated Clinton to vote for Trump, it's that enough people who also happened to be in key states hated Clinton enough to vote for Trump.

[mikey]

Also,

Maybe, but having all the votes go to one person simply because they got 1% more of the vote is stupid.
There's no way around that.

this argument applies to the popular vote as well.  Bloop, the 50 states are meant to be largely independent of each other with federal government there to regulate the states.  Kind of like the EU.

[TheMarioPianist]

If I were to advocate a new system, I would still keep the electoral college. However, the winner take all system is what is broken. It means that Democrat votes in Texas and Republican votes in California and New York are almost pointless. Personally I would divide up the electoral votes by congressional districts. I feel it would be a better way to determine how different parts of each state voted, and that it gives a more accurate picture of the country's opinions. I definitely would not be in favor of a direct popular election though. If you did that, candidates could simply gather support at large population centers and ignore decent portions of the country. The current system is broken, but a direct election would be broken in a different way. I think a congressional district system would be a sort of compromise between the two. Obviously, a candidate shouldn't win 100% of the state's electoral vote if they win the state 50.1 to 49.9; wouldn't it be a similar problem if it was possible to win the entire country by just as slim of a margin?

I'm just really disapointed that people decided Trump was a good way to be anti-establishment. Thats like having Justin Bieber perform your appendectomy because you think surgeons are corrupt.

Well...what other anti-establishment options did we have? I guess if you were on the Democrat side, you had Bernie Sanders, and Trump probably would have lost to him. In all honesty, Bernie and Trump had a common theme, and that was their anti-establishment message. I was actually a fan of Ben Carson early in the Republican primaries because he was also separated from the establishment. After he went down, I realized that people like Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, and Bush were just typical establishment candidates. No matter what they said, there is no way they would be able to swing the African American and Latino votes enough to win against either of the Democrats. Trump stood out to me (mainly because of more air time), and I began to agree with his message as I paid more attention to the stances of all the candidates. I actually got the chance to see him live when he stopped in Akron (Ohio), and I was able to compare his actual speech to the media coverage afterwards. It was astounding how much the words of his speech had been skewed and misinterpreted. Also, if his comments towards African Americans and Latinos were apparently "racist," how did he manage to demolish Romney's results in those two demographics? They obviously didn't believe the comments were as harmful as the media portrayed them to be.